Sunday, October 2, 2011

The Intersection of Magazine and Gravier Streets

Last
month, I reviewed
a murder mystery call Chasing
the Devil’s Tail by David Fulmer, set in the Storyville era of New
Orleans in the first decade of the 20th century. Fulmer has written
three additional stories in the same series, and I just finished the second
one, Jass.
The detective in the stories, Valentin St. Cyr, lives on Magazine Street. I
didn’t know precisely where on Magazine until I read in Jass that he and another character take a short stroll from his
walk-up apartment (with a balcony) to the corner of Magazine and Gravier
Street.

That
intersection in New Orleans is four doors from where my father’s printing
business was located from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. The area was all
small businesses – printing businesses, a lawyer’s office, a shop for nautical
instruments, The Board of Trade (with Board of Trade Alley paralleling Magazine
from Gravier to Natchez streets), Steve’s Sandwich Shop, the Bon Ton Café and
several others. (The photo above is of the 400 block of Gravier Street,
directly across from where my father’s building was.)

I
grew up at that intersection. We lived in the western suburb of Metairie, but I
spent many weekends and many summers right near that intersection at 424
Gravier Street.

The
building, which my father rented first from “Old Man Bossier” (pronounced
BOSS-ee-a) and then from his widow, was four stories, and narrow and deep. The
first floor had an office in the front, where my father’s desk and the
secretary’s desk were, cordoned off by a wall from the rest of the floor, which
contained the composing room, a huge old paper cutter with a vicious blade,
long tables for collating and papers and stuffing envelopes, a gigantic safe
that held nothing but old pre-canceled postage stamps, a folding machine,
another room containing an addressograph (and the coffee area) and postage
meter machine, the bathroom and then doors leading to a patio enclosed by brick
buildings on four sides but open to the sky. The first floor had a 20-foot
ceiling.

To
reach the second floor, you walked up a very long flight of stairs, where you’d
find the printing presses and the room for shooting negatives (this was back in
the days before computers) to burn into the plates for the letterpress
printers. The third and fourth floors were what we kids called “the haunted
floors” – unused, containing old furniture, Mr. Bossier’s rolltop desk and
broken chair, old boxes and bottles (which had contained something of an
alcoholic nature). The fourth floor was lighter, but just as dirty as the
third; it had a skylight and had been used for storage. We found old Sugar Bowl
posters from the 1930s up there.

The
building was old; my guess would be that it had been built in the 1880s or
1890s. What I didn’t know, until I read Jass,
was that the entire area had been largely residential at one time – apartments and
town houses. I knew it only as a business area two or three blocks from Canal
Street and two or three blocks from all the big bank buildings on St. Charles
and Carondelet avenues. It was also the perfect location for Mardi Gras – just two
block from where the parades went by.

I
probably could not count the number of envelopes I labeled, or the number of
magazines (including the publication for the New Orleans employees of Shell
Oil) I addressed with that addressograph. I was very close to the postage
meter, too; we spent a lot of time together. In the summers, I would do all of
those things, and usually serve as the delivery boy, pushing the red card
filled with boxes to Shell Oil, Whitney Bank, various ad agencies in the business
district and the French Quarter, over to the Rault Center on Loyola Avenue, and
a lot of other places. I got to know downtown New Orleans pretty well in my
junior high, high school and college years.

In
the mid-1970s, the building was sold, and my father had to find a new place to
rent, which he did a few blocks away on Magazine Street. He was there only for
a few years, and then moved again to the final location for his business, at
501 Baronne. But 424 Gravier is forever stamped in my mind as the place my
father had his business.

Today,
interestingly enough, the area has moved back in the residential direction.
Most of the buildings in the 400 block of Gravier (including the one my father
rented) are now condos and townhomes. The Bon Ton Café is still around the corner
on Magazine Street. Steve’s Sandwich Shop is long gone. The Board of Trade
Building is still there, and still has a nice patio area.

woah.... this is really interesting.another story of you and your family.and i can just see those heavy printing presses.amazed at the fact that they were on the 2nd floor.hearing about the roll top deskand the lighter 4th floori wonder what it would be like to live in that area...

Poetry at Work

Follow by Email

My Business Web Site

Poetry at Work

About Me

Professional writer exploring faith and culture, life and work; happily married to Janet, the love of my life; father of two grown sons. Award-winning speechwriter and communication consultant. I am an editor for TweetSpeak Poetry and the author of the novels "Dancing Priest," "A Light Shining," and "Dancing King," and the non-fiction book "Poetry at Work."